Cleland was heart of the Sailors

Saturday mornings during football season always were the same for Charlie and Chip Cleland.

Father and son would head down to the Sarasota High field house, the smell of sweat-laden pants still hanging in the air, and wash the uniforms.

The original multi-tasker, the Sailor football coach planned ahead as well. Charlie and Chip would hustle downtown to Norton Camera to pick up the Friday night game film.

Cleland thought of everything and everyone. Including the Sailors’ upcoming foe.

“He knew he had to ship the film off to the next opponent,’’ Chip said.

Film and laundry aside, the most important part of Cleland’s Saturday mornings, Tuesday nights, Friday afternoons or any other time, was the hours spent on the field house’s rotary phone.

Calling colleges, talking with coaching secretaries, trying to secure scholarships for his “ballplayers,’’ as he called them. More than 150 of them played in college.

“He got them scholarships,’’ Chip said, “and the word got out and the kids would ask him for help.’’

Back then, young Chip was Charlie’s shadow. He adored his hero. Later, when coach “Cle’’ became Sarasota’s athletic director, he’d accompany dad to the games of all Sailor sports teams.

So it’s only right that father and son were together Thursday morning, for the very last time.

Charlie didn’t want to enter hospice care, but there really wasn’t a choice. He had been suffering health problems for years, congestive heart failure the last 8-10.

On Sunday, Chip thought Charlie was rallying. He was about to make an appointment with his doctor, “then there was an immediate decline.’’

Wednesday night, and into Thursday morning, he never left his dad’s room. Charlie still could communicate, but was failing fast. Chip sat down in a chair next to his bed “and I just knew.’’

Chip looked at his watch. It read 7:07. As nurses scurried in and out, “I just squeezed his hand and said, ‘I love you man’ and pulled his neck and hugged him and he just gave this last gasp and died in my arms.

“It was three minutes to the time I sat down and he went. I think he waited for me.’’

Charlie Cleland, the dean of Sarasota High football, mentor to hundreds of players, a first-team Hall of Fame coach, husband and father, was pronounced dead at 7:10. He was 79.

“There would be no need for divorce lawyers if everyone had a husband like him,’’ said Chip, who played guard for the Sailors under Charlie. “The man was moral and honest to a tee. There was integrity and no one was ever going to cheat, lie or steal.

“He loved his players and they knew it. He would scold them and then want to know what you learned from that. He might hug you and cry with you.’’

Indeed, Cleland’s players loved him, and that love was displayed at a surprise party two years ago. The room nearly burst with the presence of many of Cleland’s former guys — Nick DeVirgilis, Paul Piurowski, Walt Rothenbach, Eddie Howell, Lee Hayworth, Ken Calleja and many more.

“I came through the age of Aquarius,’’ Calleja said, “and while others were out getting high on you name it, I found it intoxicating just to please him. It beat it all.’’

Charlie Cleland was about a lot more than simply a gridiron. During his 37-year career at Sarasota High he taught biology, anatomy, physiology and physical education. In 1960 he introduced the first anatomy and physiology curriculum in the state at the high school level.

The Oklahoma-born Cleland first arrived in Sarasota in 1957 after graduating from Southwest Missouri State University, where he captained the football team.

Charlie’s brother, Troy, the head football coach at the new Riverview High, told him about a science teaching opening at Sarasota High.

By 1958 he was a Sailor assistant under Al Jeffrey. From 1961-63 he served under Pete Bales before taking over the Sailor program in 1964.

Over 20 years his Sarasota teams went 128-70-7, going 10-0 in 1965 and reaching the state semifinals in 1968. Fourteen of his players were high school All-Americans. Fourteen played professionally.

Football wasn’t Charlie’s only contribution. Of course, it wasn’t. Cleland served as the Sailors’ swimming coach for six years, going 77-17. He spent 30 years coaching the Sailor track team.

He had Calleja, who still holds the Sailor record in the 110-meter hurdles, knock matchboxes off the tops of the hurdles. Under Cleland his time improved by nearly three seconds, down to 13.7.

“I didn’t get that fast over three years,’’ Calleja said. “He was a technician. He spent hours with me, until dark. Just me and him.’’

And when integration happened in Sarasota in 1968, it was Cleland who kept the Sarasota High student body from imploding.

“We had student body unrest,’’ Calleja said, “and Charlie unified the football team by making us understand that in the huddle, race, religion and economic status makes no difference if you guys want to win.

“He ended up galvanizing the student body and it seems like problems went away the more we won.’’

In 2003 the Sarasota School Board did the most logical thing possible. It renamed the Sailor football field “Cleland Stadium at Ihrig Field.’’

A coach and educator who gave so much to his school, finally, fittingly, was rewarded.